Thursday, March 30, 2006

Well, we may be getting closer to the tree bombs, the green grenades, bomb-eating mushies, throw in some Edenfern™, and what we have now is some nitrotetrazole (studied for the past few decades as a next-generation explosive): a primary explosive agent that is supposedly much friendlier to the environment. As reported in this New Scientist article, these green bombs would alleviate the hazardous pollution plumes that are caused by current "lead-based primary explosives that are used to detonate everything from blasting caps to ballistic missiles."

My Hang Huynh is an explosives expert at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico who is engineering the green explosives, and believes this has tremendous potential to mitigate fallout dangers of various types of explosions, not just those used in war. "Primary explosives are the relatively weak yet highly sensitive materials used to set off powerful explosions," the article explains. "Lead-based chemicals came into use for this purpose one hundred years ago to replace the even more toxic mercury fulminate." But what if bombs could actually be used to fight pollution, kill smog, clean up the air? Strategic parts of the city could be turned into air freshner bombing ranges. People would actually want to live next to them. Mushroom clouds would become signs of healthier neighborhoods. Farmers would gravitate to the craters. Cruise missiles as the agents of re-oxygenation; weapons as city lungs. And so, the evolution of the bomb goes on....